This book is really great. It meanders between heady prose that is both profound and surreal to simple humourous and authentic dialogue that not only evokes the South but transports you there. The descriptions of Southern poverty are often grim but its river like twists and punctuations of humor don't cause the reader to get wayland in the wasteland that is McCarthy's take on Tennessee. The bleak condom covered river is like the idealised beauty of a river runs through after an unfortunate visit to an std clinic. Though the sun regularly breaks through the gloom. For any Southern lit fans this is a must. ( )

never got to finish this, as i lost the book, does not seem to have much of an actual plot line except to follow Sutree a man whom seems to have left what would be a comfortable life with a wife and children to move to a house boat type structure on the edge of what sounds like a pretty polluted river in a poor part of the south to fish and retell stories of his "adventures" and relay the stories of a ever widening and stranger / degenerate cast of characters through brothels, bars, diners, fishing trips, walkabouts in the woods, forays into stealing pigs, in and out jail and living under bridges. Thrown in there somewhere is a witch like older woman, a few farmers, homeless people a couple run in with the cops,a friendship with an indian living in a cliffside, and the passing of his son and subsequent bludgeoning by his former family and in laws. Going to have to finish this... but even though i don't see much of a plot line other than to follow him and his acquaintances through their daily lives and debacles i have to say I was enjoying it. ( )

It's longer than I'm used to from McCarthy and maybe longer than it ought to be, because he's more indulgent in this book than he usually is. But when he gets it right there's no one better and when he slips he's still better than most. And comedy though this is supposed to be it's plenty dark and depraved for my tastes, which is good. Well worth the time I spent with it. ( )

"Suttree" is a fat one, a book with rude, startling power and a flood of talk. Much of it takes place on the Tennessee River, and Cormac McCarthy, who has written "The Orchard Keeper" and other novels, gives us a sense of river life that reads like a doomed "Huckleberry Finn."

The author wishes to express his gratitude to The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rockefeller Foundation, and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

First words

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of he watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abadoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these soothblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

Quotations

They are not rooks in those obsidian winter trees, but stranger fowl, pale, lean and salamandrine birds that move by night unburnt through the moon's blue crucible.

How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.

Wikipedia in English (2)

By the author of Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, Suttree is the story of Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege with his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville. Remaining on the margins of the outcast community there--a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals, and squatters--he rises above the physical and human squalor with detachment, humor, and dignity.

The story or Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege with his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville. Remaining on the margins of the outcast community there - a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals, and squatters - he rises above the physical and human squalor with detachment, humor, and dignity.… (more)